Calvin Wilson Mateer, forty-five years a missionary in Shantung, China

by D. W. Fisher

The final meeting for the tentative revision of the New Testament lasted for more than five months, and the work was pushed with even more than the usual vigor. The Centenary Missionary Conference for China was only a year ahead when they began. After the conference the revision was to run the gauntlet of criticisms, and these were to be canvassed; and thus at last the revision was to take its permanent form. Mrs. Mateer gives the following graphic account of one of the closing incidents of that session.

Passage had already been engaged for the Goodrich family on a steamer sailing north. The baggage was all carried down, the family all waited on the upper veranda, with hats on, and the Doctor’s hat was ready for him to seize as soon as he should get out of the meeting. The “rickshaw” men were waiting, ready to run with their loads. But still no sound of approaching feet! Finally, as it got dangerously near the hour of sailing, Mrs. Goodrich said, “I must go and hurry them up.” So she marched boldly down the hall, listened a minute at the door, and came back with her fingers on her lips. “Those dear men are praying,” she whispered; and tears filled our eyes as our hearts silently joined in the prayer. Of course, every morning session was opened with prayer; but this was the consummation of all these years of toil, the offering of the finished work at the altar.

Although the committee completed their revision at that session, so far as this was possible until the conference should meet and approve or disapprove it, there was very considerable work of a tedious nature left to Dr. Mateer to perform. The finishing touches yet to be put upon portions of the version were not a few; but the thing that required of him the most protracted and delicate attention was the punctuation. For this he introduced a new system which seemed to him to be best for the Chinese language, and which can be estimated fairly only by a scholar in that tongue. To him also as chairman came the criticisms which were invited from all quarters, most of which were welcomed, but some of which touched him to the quick. At length, in the spring of 1907, the conference assembled at Shanghai, and the report of the Committee of Revisers was made to that body. He wrote to a friend in the United States concerning it: “We had a grand missionary conference in Shanghai, which, of course, I attended. There was more unanimity and less discussion than in the former conference.” The report received a hearty approval, and the version was started on its course of examination by all concerned, as preparatory to its final completion. It was issued from the press at Shanghai in 1910. It was called a revision, the aim being to offer it, not so much as a rival to the older versions, as an improvement upon them; but in reality it was an almost entirely new translation, though in making it advantage had been taken of the valuable pioneering done by the others. Writing to a friend after the conference had adjourned, Dr. Mateer frankly said:

Please note that we still have opportunity for final revision, in which many defects will be eliminated. There are places not a few with which I myself am dissatisfied, many of which I see can be improved. I refer especially to texts that are excessively literal, and where foreign idioms are used to the detriment of the style. It must also be remembered that many terms and expressions that seem strange and perhaps inexpressive at first will on further use seem good and even admirable. Every new translation must have a little time to win its way. That our version will appeal strongly to the great mass of the Chinese church I have no doubt.

During the long years he was engaged in this great undertaking he learned some valuable lessons concerning the translation of the Scriptures. He came to speak of it as an art, for which special training and experience are needed. In an article which appeared after his death, in the November issue of “The Chinese Recorder” for that year, he gave at length a discussion of “Lessons Learned in Translating the Bible into Mandarin.” He pointed out difficulties that hamper the making of a version in the Mandarin as compared with the Wen-li in either of its forms. To appreciate these, one needs to be a master in those tongues. But he also indicated others that lie in the way of a translation of the Scriptures into any sort of Chinese. Many of the very ideas of the Bible on moral and spiritual subjects had never entered the Chinese mind, and consequently there are no suitable words or phrases to express them. Just as western science has to invent its own terms when it enters China, so also within limits must the translator of the Bible introduce a vocabulary suited for his purpose. He believed that in the China of to-day prejudice had so far begun to yield that this could be effectively and wisely done. In fact, each branch of modern thought that has been grafted on the stem of the Chinese has already brought with it new words, so that hundreds of these have recently been coined and are on the tongues of the leaders. Along with the lack of an adequate vocabulary goes another thing that adds to the difficulty. In the translation of other books the main need is to express the thought, and in doing this considerable freedom is usually tolerated; but accuracy of expression, because of the very nature of the Bible, is of the first importance in a version. Besides, the Chinese Christians seem especially disposed to insist on this quality. The tendency of a translator is apt to be toward adapting the Scripture to what is conceived to be the taste of the Chinese, to write up to the style with which the educated are familiar, or down to the level of the uneducated speech. Another defect is to magnify or to minify peculiarities of expression originating in the region where the Scriptures were written. Dr. Mateer thought that he recognized very distinctly tendencies of this sort in the older versions, though abating in more recent times. His article concluded as follows:

The Bible does not need any doctoring at the hands of translators. The Chinese church is entitled to have the Bible just as it is, in a strictly faithful and accurate translation. This they demand of us who translate it for them. They do not want to know what the writers would have said if they had been Chinese, but what they actually did say. This is the manner in which the Chinese who have learned English are now translating foreign books into their own language, and this is very evidently the spirit of the times. The English Bible, especially the Revised Version, is a monument of careful and accurate translation. Translators into Chinese cannot do better than follow in the same line. I have a number of times heard students when using commentaries, or hearing lectures on various portions of Scripture, express their surprise and dissatisfaction that the Bible had not been more accurately translated. I have known Chinese preachers, when quoting a text which had a marginal reading saying that the original says so and so, to remark with strong disapproval, “If the original says so, why not translate it so, and be done with it?” On one occasion in our committee, when a question was raised about giving a metaphor straight or paraphrasing into a comparison, one of our literary helpers said with vigorous emphasis: “Do you suppose that we Chinese cannot understand and appreciate a metaphor? Our books are full of them, and new ones are welcome.” If we do not give the Chinese the Bible as it is, they will condemn us, and before long will do the work for themselves.

In conclusion, it is worthy of remark that no one man can make a satisfactory translation of the Bible. There are limitations to every man’s knowledge of truth and of language. Every man’s vision is distorted in some of its aspects. This is a lesson we have been learning day by day, and are still learning. If any man wishes to find out his limitations in these respects, let him join a translating committee.

With regard to the difficulties in the way of this revision, Dr. Goodrich thus expresses himself:

No literary work of such peculiar difficulty has been undertaken in China since the first translation of the Scriptures by Morrison. To produce a Bible whose language shall run close to the original, simple enough to be understood by ordinary persons when read aloud in the church or in the home, and yet chaste in diction; this work to be done by a committee chosen from widely distant localities,—from Peking on the northeast, to Kneichow in the southwest,—might well frighten any body of men. For the first years together the work was almost the despair of the committee. Their efforts to make themselves mutually understood and to unite on a rendering were often immensely prolonged and exasperatingly amusing.

But they were trying to do for China what Wyclif did for the English and what Luther did for the Germans,—to make a translation of the Bible into a vernacular form of national speech which would be everywhere intelligible; and they took courage and pressed forward slowly but surely toward their goal. In doing this they not only have accomplished the end immediately sought, but they also have put into the hands of the people at large a model which will largely mold all their coming literature.